Tongue-Tied
by Malhearst
Summary: He saw her first. And he's hungry, hungering, hungered. Rated M for allusions to torture and psychological terror.


_For Sophy. I'm so sorry._

* * *

He saw her first.

Bartemius—Jr. is a mathematical symbol for less than father, so he's dropped it—knows that it's her, because he's been obsessed with time ever since he was told about the clock.

Now, looking down at his wrist, he sees it has begun ticking. The one arm moves slowly from 12, and he assumes it's counting years now. Once it's done, it'll be counting months. Then days. Then hours until their final blend.

The clock is parchment and coffee stains with deep, plum purple rims around a series of heavenly bodies. He's always liked it for its mystique.

Mysterious is not the word he would use for her. She is _unknowable_. Something extra-terrestrial and thrillingly forbidden. He learns this a couple of months later when she chooses to see someone else instead: Frank Longbottom.

But Bartemius saw her first.

"The clock is a gift," his mother told him when she gave it to him. It was on his eleventh birthday, the kind of day when the sun shone just right through the treetops to dabble the ground with speckles of green. It was the kind of day that made him forget how afraid he was of going away.

His father wasn't home.

"Don't be afraid to look at it every once in a while. When it starts, you'll know you have met your soulmate."

Bartemius doesn't understand the concept of a soulmate as much as he understands that it's love. It's someone who has to love you. One day, a day before he sees her, he sees someone else; it's an older boy, a moustache peeking out on his sallow face, his hair black and his eyes watery pellets in his gaunt face. The boy reminds him of his father, and when he looks down at the watch, he keeps repeating _Please_ like a prayer at the tip of his tongue.

The watch is supposed to show who will love him until the end of their days, but when he opens his eyes to look, heart too frantically, hopefully, painfully beating in his chest, the arm hasn't moved. Not one tick. Not even a tock. He gives it a few seconds.

Then he decides to forget.

But this girl makes it move, and he eyes the arms hungrily every morning when he wakes up. It takes a few days for the novelty to wear off, but after five or six or seven weeks, he notices the second movement. A rough estimate tells him that means five or six or seven years.

He can't wait that long.

One day, he decides to walk into her and pretend he's dropping his books. She's three years older and still a head higher, but he draws himself up a little, not comically, just in a manly way. Like his father. She smiles at him, her mouth an endlessly kind line stretching upwards on the right side of face, as she says, "I'm sorry. Are you okay?"

Bartemius is reminded of his mother and decides that he already has one of those. He doesn't want her to love him the way his mother does.

"I'm fine," he says, crouching down, too aware of the spring to his step and the shortness of his hair. His movement are juvenile, and his voice is soft and light. "How about you? I should have watched where I was going."

As she answers him, her voice flowery and sweet, he catches a scent of her hair: coconut. He tries to be inconspicuous as he inhales for just a second longer than needed, smacking his tongue against the roof of his mouth experimentally to see if he can taste it. Taste _her_.

He can, he realises with glee. The part of him that's always awake and always hungry remembers the watch and peers closer for one on her arm, desperate for a glimpse of himself in her future.

There isn't one.

"You don't wear a watch?" he asks her.

Her shoulder-length, blonde hair falls in front of her face as she draws back, surprised, to look at her wrist. "I don't," she replies as if she's only just noticed this about herself. "I guess I don't like to be reminded of the times that has passed."

"How about the time yet to come?" he says, suave for a twelve-year-old, and she smiles.

It takes him a while to save for the watch. When he first asks his mother where she bought it, his father is there. It's one of those rare nights at home when Barty Sr. is allowed home by the chip on his shoulder, the devil always whispering things in his ear—run, run, run or fall, that's the choice—and Bartemius suddenly understands why Alice doesn't like to be reminded of the time.

"What sort of nonsense is this? What do you need a soulmate watch for? You have your own, and quite frankly, I'm still not sure if that does more harm than not," his father replies gruffly, ruffling the newspaper as if reminding everyone that he's actually _reading_ and that the dinner table is not the place to disturb him.

Bartemius looks pleadingly at his mother, who in return smiles.

They go there together.

When he brings the gift back to Alice— _it's not because it was Christmas, I just thought of you_ —she smiles again, and he realises he never wants her to stop. He knows, and she doesn't, but soon she will.

"It works from the moment you put it on. The second you see your soulmate, the arm will move."

Her smile turns overbearing, but that's okay too. As long as she smiles.

Besides, the smile turns into surprise the second she fastens it around the slenderness of her wrist, and Bartemius feels triumphantly mirrored in her heart. Now she knows.

Alice looks up, but her gaze doesn't settle on him. It settles on a point behind him, and Bartemius is just about to turn around to see what she's looking at, when he hears, "Hey dove. What've you got there?"

Bartemius doesn't have to turn around to recognise Frank Longbottom's voice; if he hadn't spoken, her smile, now radiant and pure, and stolen, stolen, _stolen_ , would have alerted him. It was supposed to be _him_ , and now she will never know.

At least not until his clock strikes thirteen.

As he grows older, he grows out of the desperation. He grows slimmer fingers, stronger hands, broader shoulders, longer hair. He grows a deeper voice and a vine inside himself that snakes around his neck and down his spine. It's green and pulsating with life, with want, with a sense of belonging and a single word in his ear: _mine_. He grows colder towards his father and warmer towards his mother, and he begins realising heat for what it is: beauty. love.

They play The Floor Is Lava, and he becomes a willing virgin sacrifice. They play with fire, and he's the first to put the torch to the thatch. He looks into the fire, and he sees himself: hungry and hungering and hungered. Now that he's starving, he's also eating quicker, swallowing maiden hearts when presented, never full. He's a black hole, but when he sees her, he reels himself in.

He smiles, he winks, he moves on.

And he studies soulmates. Apparently, there's a big amount of scholarly research on the subject. He reads the basics: soulmates are linked, soulmates usually stay together for the rest of their lives, soulmates can blend by marrying or having children.

Then the research grows deeper, darker, and he longs to strike a match in the abyss. Blends also include: lifelong business projects, Unbreakable Vows, blending blood, and soul magic.

Soul magic, of course, is restricted with a capital 'R'.

Soul magic, he finds out, is giving away and/or receiving a piece of a soul. He likes that. If that is what blending is, if that is what _love_ is, that's what he wants. A total commitment.

He looks at his clock, and it passes the halfway mark, and his own soul, the vine that snakes around his heart and pulsates every minute into existence crows _soon._

Sometime before his eighteenth birthday, the clock strikes twelve, and he knows he has a year. A year to prepare, to gather ingredients, to have every eventuality covered. He buys roses and chocolates and ritual knives and spellbooks and potion ingredients and portable cauldron sets, and when the day finally arrives, he sets off towards the Longbottom house.

They're not expecting him, because new families are always so self-absorbed; everything in perfect orbit around what they can see and touch and smell. But that was supposed to be his family, he knows, and he will make sure to take what is rightfully his.

On the way there, he meets the Lestranges. Bellatrix, gleeful and maddened, asks him if he wants to join a treasure hunt. He tells her he is already tracking down treasure, and that he's going to the Longbottom house. She squeals in delight and tells him that they will escort him, and Bartemius feels important. Here comes the emperor with his fine new clothes and a troupe that doesn't mind worshipping the image of a false god.

He feels like a king. He feels like a god.

Alice looks so frightened when they enter, and the others storm them. Bartemius has always liked fire and watches the playful dance happen in front of his eyes. He holds Alice close and tells her he'll keep her safe.

It's the happiest day of his life.

Both of them know what they're doing to Frank, but Bartemius doesn't care, and soon Alice won't either. He tells her how she was wrong, shows her his watch, how it's ticking down now, little more than an hour, and if he's here, how can anyone else be his soulmate?

At first, she refuses to hold up her own, screaming for Frank, but Bartemius reveals to her how she has been duped, tricked, that if she will only let him show her—

She storms towards the door, and he sighs and puts her in a Full Body-Bind. Then he holds up the watch he gave her next to the one he received seven, almost eight years ago. They match. Her eyes go wide, but he trails a caring hand down her cheek.

"I tried to tell you," he says. He's brought everything to the room they're now locked in, and he opens the packages to a backdrop of Frank's screams.

"I don't know exactly how we're going to blend, love, so I brought a little of everything."

The room is darkness and washed-out hues, and there's a ray of moonlight pressing its way through the messed-up blinds. She's difficult to handle, but she has calmed down since then, and he sees this as a good thing.

Although he likes the fire in her.

He dispels the Body-Bind, and she sits there for a few moments, chest heaving, tears trickling. Bartemius walks over confidently, crouches in front of, takes her chin gently, and licks away the tears. "Don't worry," he croons. "I'll never let you lose me."

In her company, he seems to have lost all resistance. The fire inside him is swelling and roaring like a great beast, a great, misunderstood, beast, and he feels like he's crossed some borderline.

His father once called him wicked, but this is the first time Bartemius can see why. And it makes him smile.

"As long as you're mine," he adds.

When she looks at him, he thinks she looks faded.

"What are you going to do to me?" she asks.

Bartemius holds up his watch. "Nothing I wasn't destined to do. Only twelve minutes now, until we blend."

* * *

Prompts

 **Word Count:** 1,969

 **Writing Club:** Angst

 **Daily Prompt Inspiration:** (song) As Long As You're Mine

 **The Fairy Tales Challenge:** The Golden Goose - write about greed

 **Challenge Your Versatility:** Bartemius Crouch Jr.

 **The Ultimate Patronus Quest Challenge:** _Unicorn_ \- write a soulmate!AU


End file.
